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Wednesday, February 4, 2026
7 pm
Please note: A previous version of this SciCafe was listed as SciCafe: NYC's Hidden Pollution Problem. This program is still about science in the subway, but the topic has changed as of January 21.
In this SciCafe, Alexander Lucaci, executive director of the MetaSUB Consortium and postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, explores the hidden microbiome of New York City’s subway system and how a local experiment grew into a global research effort, sampling 50–60 cities each year. What began in paternal panic after a child licked a subway pole has become a decade-long project mapping the microbes that shape urban life.
From surprising discoveries to serious public health questions, this talk looks beyond the gut microbiome to examine how urban microbes influence antibiotic resistance, emerging pathogens, and future therapies—and why understanding the environments we move through every day is essential to understanding human health.
Quick Pick: Airborne Viral Diversity in Public Transit Systems Around the World
Big Bites: Subway Swabbers Find a Microbe Jungle and Thousands of New Species, The New York Times (subscription required)
'Global City Sampling Day' launches Weill antimicrobial study, Cornell Chronicle
Deep Dive: Discovery and description of novel phage genomes from urban microbiomes sampled by the MetaSUB consortium, Scientific Reports
ASL interpretation is available for this program. Please email [email protected] to reserve seats in our ASL section.